Local author Fred Setterberg will talk about his true-life novel, “Lunch Bucket Paradise,” at the San Leandro Main Library, 300 Estudillo Ave., this Saturday, Nov. 17, from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m.

The novel chronicles Setterberg’s childhood in the postwar Jefferson Manor, a blue-collar neighborhood in San Leandro. Setterberg poignantly explores class, masculinity and modern life amidst the intoxicating abundance of a new California lifestyle that developed during the 1950s and 1960s. Admission is free.

Setterberg will then end his program with a book-signing session. Copies of his book will be sold at this event for $15.

Oakland resident Setterberg’s essays, stories and journalism have appeared in The Southern Review, The Iowa Review, The New York Times, The Nation, and many other periodicals. He earned his B.A. in English at the University of California at Berkeley and his M.A. in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University.  He is a former staff writer for the East Bay Express.

Setterberg’s writing has won him a NEA fellowship, the Faulkner-Wisdom Essay Prize, the national arts writing prize from the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, several feature-writing awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association and a citation from Project Censor for his coverage of U.S. military policy in Central America for Mother Jones.

For more information about the event, call the library at 510-577-3971.